Author Spotlight: RNAi Inheritance and ChIP in C. elegans

Research in our lab examines how chromatin-associated proteins, histone modifications, and small RNA pathway factors work together in the context of development and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. The RNA inheritance assay, using a GFP reporter, has become a very powerful tool. This protocol describes how to standardize the preparation, scoring, and passaging of worms, and the preparation of ChIP samples, which can help to generate reproducible results.

One of the experimental challenges when studying germline-expressed transgenes is isolating the effects in the animal's germline. We're currently using whole animals for ChIP, but in the future we would like to develop assays to examine chromatin, specifically in the germline. Our laboratory is interested in histone methylation and proteins that recognize these marks.

Going forward, we would like to investigate the interplay between these chromatin readers and small RNA pathways in the context of RNAi inheritance at transgenes and the regulation of endogenous sequences.